


Underwater Again

by Carmenlire



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec Lightwood Deserves Nice Things, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Established Relationship, Happy Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood, Head of the Institute Alec Lightwood, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Alec, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, References to Depression, Sad with a Happy Ending, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-17 06:05:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16089593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmenlire/pseuds/Carmenlire
Summary: Alec is the best at everything. He has to be. There’s no room to be anything but perfect. He’s the perfect son, perfect student, perfect shadowhunter. Alec supposes that things could be worse. It’s foolish, naive and unforgivably childish, but he wishes that he could know who Alec is. It’s so basic as to be stupid, but it’s true.He wonders if he’ll ever find out.





	Underwater Again

He has to be the best.

He _is_ the best.

He’s a Shadowhunter first, Lightwood second, parabatai third. He stretches himself so thin that sometimes he swears there are holes in him. Breaking points that show in the way smiles feel fake and laughter’s always just out of reach.

He doesn't know who _Alec_ is. He know who he wants to be-- who he could be-- but it’s hypothetical.

He should probably care more than he does. He should care that if you stripped those roles from him, he isn’t sure what would be left. He should care that every day that goes by suffocates him a little more. 

The noose tightens over his neck every time he laughs along at another boy’s casually homophobic remarks, every time shame burns bitter and deep when he catches himself staring at a boy, every time he looks around the Institute, around New York, and sees a wasteland.

Fuck knows that it’s enough effort to get out of bed, though, without adding more to his slate.

He can’t think sometimes. For as long as he can remember, he’s had lessons on how to be a leader, how to be a soldier. He knows how to be a big brother and a parabatai.

He doesn’t know what it is to feel human, though. He doesn’t know if he’s lost, a dumbass sheep throwing away day after day for a cause he isn’t sure he believes in for a society that would cast him out if they knew the truth.

Sometimes he wonders if he’s going insane, if he isn’t already there and it’s as desolate as it is chilling-- though all of it is covered with an apathetic veneer that makes Alec wish terribly for something to warm his bones.

He is so, terribly, cold.

He goes for walks sometimes. In between training sessions and lessons in Maryse’s office that are as much cutting criticism as advice, he gets away. Sometimes after a patrol finishes in the early morning, he’ll stay away for just a little bit longer. When he's at the academy in Idris he ambles around the grounds, a silent shadow.

Sometimes he goes for aimless walks on deserted streets. With his glamour rune activated, he’s just another ghost in a city of millions. In the quiet, in the darkness, sometimes he almost thinks he finds a sort of peace.

It’s short lived and easily crumbled, but it’s his and he holds on to it with everything he has.

Sometimes it’s the middle of the day and he takes a morning, an hour in the afternoon, to go to this coffee shop around the block. Or he goes to a florist in Brooklyn that always has a story to tell and never expects Alec to reciprocate.

He goes to museums by himself, the movies. Once a week he manages to leave the Institute for a little while and he explores the city. It makes him feel whole. It makes him feel less alone. Upon retrospect, maybe he takes himself on dates.

That feeling is cut with the caveat that it’s double-edged. He explores and he lives and he yearns. Sometimes he’s the loneliest when he’s amongst everyone else but he takes the feeling and shoves in deep in his chest. 

He tells himself when the longing gets particularly savage that at least that means he’s alive. He can feel something after all.

The dates keep him sane through the tumult of being the eldest son. Izzy, who’s just as precocious a teenager as she was a child, loves to tease him. _Heavy is the head_.

Sometimes Alec wishes he could take the supposed crown he wears, thorny and brittle and more burden than blessing, and burn it to ashes.

It tastes like a death sentence. It leaves an acrid feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about his life stretching before him.

It’s another shameful secret on top of a dozen, but sometimes he hopes that he’s given a soldier’s death. With honor, in battle, at a tragically young age that shadowhunters accept before they get their first runes.

The truth is that he’s dying anyway. He kills himself in little ways, in metaphorical bullshit ways that are as pretentious as they are true.

He works his ass of to be the top of his class. He gets the best marks in every subject. He’s killed scores of demons and he’s not even out of the academy yet. He’s the best warrior of his generation-- any opponent, any weapon. Jace is the only one who can best him and it’s only occasionally.

After his homework is done and training is over, he spends evenings learning about how to run an Institute from his parents. They’re harsh taskmasters that demand perfection and Alec’s goddamned if he doesn’t deliver, even if it’s never acknowledged.

He spends summers touring Institutes all over the world, networking for the future, learning how other areas work. All of the old families send their progeny out. It’s just how things are done.

Alec loves it. He loves the summers where he’s away from everything that reminds him of home-- whatever that means-- and his future. He makes friends, sometimes for a few months and some he’s kept in touch with, and he travels and he learns. He learns what he needs to but he also learns about the world.

He picks up half a dozen languages, perfects the ones he already knew. He tries new food and explores different museums and historical sites, and every summer he thinks that he just might reclaim a sliver of his soul.

That quickly disappears when he returns to New York, when he goes back to the strained monotony the Academy is. He collapses in on himself, loathe to draw attention. When the school term starts, he’s the perfect Lightwood heir again.

No one knows that sometimes he has to physically clench his jaw to keep his screams in.

He doesn’t flinch when a friend insults his very sense of self, even if no one knows but him.

No one knows that sometimes he lets himself grow distracted-- he’s the top of his class and even if he is an exemplary student, he gets bored, too. So he daydreams of the little outside _pâtisserie_ he’d visited every single Sunday because the waiter was cute and always gave him free _des pain au chocolat_.

By winter break, the little life summer had given him is snuffed out completely, mercilessly. He’s crumbling under the weight of expectations as graduation approaches. Some kids get a few months, up to a year off, for the Grand Tour, an archaic yet fun pastime for shadowhunter elite. 

Alec will not be one of them. He will return directly to New York to begin more formal, specialized training of how to be the Head of the Institute, while also being put onto active duty.

There’s no rest for him.

There’s never any rest.

Alec’s day’s pass in a blur. He does his best not to think about it too much because it’s just too fucking depressing.

This is his life. This is the rest of his life. 

There’s nothing for him.

Alec is the best at everything. He has to be. There’s no room to be anything but perfect.

He’s the perfect son, perfect student, perfect shadowhunter.

Alec supposes that things could be worse. It’s foolish, naive and unforgivably childish, but he wishes that he could know who _Alec_ is. It’s so basic as to be stupid, but it’s true.

He wonders if he’ll ever find out.

 

He walks through the museum, lost in the paintings. They’re rich and vibrant and each has an achingly captivating story to tell. He gets lost in it sometimes. More often than not he visits a museum, a bookstore, the florist across town, and he loses track of time.

He doesn’t feel so alone here.

Truthfully, he rarely feels alone these days. That despondent loneliness that had filled him fit to bursting for so long is a phantom sensation. It feels like a lifetime ago.

He’s found a person to get lost with.

Magnus is on the other side of the room, analyzing a portrait. He’d sworn he’d ran into the object on the streets of Dublin almost a hundred years ago and Alec had just raised a brow and headed to the next piece.

Alec leans closer to the art, the better to detail the sweeping lines of color and chaotic subject. He’s startled out of his reverie by a hand sliding into his back pocket as a man comes to his side.

“Alexander,” Magnus murmurs. “Ready for dinner? Our reservations are in twenty minutes and it’s a little bit of a walk.”

Distractedly, Alec nods and lets his husband pull him from the room, through hallways and galleries, and the gift shop.

As he follows Magnus, Alec feels a burst of joy hit him. It’s date night. The museum had been Alec's pick-- the Met was showing an exhibit on Irish street art this season-- and dinner had been Magnus’s decision. He’d been infuriatingly tight-lipped about it all week and Alec has a suspicion that it’s going to be the new Lebanese place in Lower Manhattan that Magnus had been raving about since it opened.

Alec wraps an arm around Magnus’s shoulders and pulls him to his side, kissing the top of his head. Magnus’s face is down-turned but Alec manages to see his grin at the gesture.

The two of them walk down the sidewalk. Alec's comfortable, sinking into the peace that eluded him for oh so long.

He’s all of the things he’s always been. A politician, a soldier, an anchor. But he’s also _Alec_ and Alec likes dadaism, oreos, and Netflix. He’s _Alexander_ that likes soft touches, lingerie, and lazy mornings with the love of his life.

He’s the best he can be and that's just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on tumblr @carmenlire :)


End file.
